Posts by Sam Tana

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re: Hold on a minute...

There are many ways of generating electricity, only some of which involve burning fossil fuels. And even if you do use that method, burning fossil fuel in a power station to generate electricity is far more efficient than burning it in a car engine to generate movement.

Electric vehicles are very practical on short (<100 mile) journeys already, and making them practical on longer journeys is a relatively simple, although necessarily expensive, matter of improving infrastructure and the ability to "hot swap" from discharged batteries to a fully charged pack.

You're spoiled

You see a big screen iPod Touch and think "is that it?!" How quickly you tire of wonders! Only a few years ago a regular Touch was pure science fiction, now it's so ubiquitous and "right" that you forget how truly amazing it is.

An alternative....

Just accept that as you get older, so you're more likely to put on weight. The so-called "moobs" are, therefore, badges of seniority and experience - like grey hair and wrinkles. Yes, you could waste your life desperately trying to hold back time like some enormously vain King Canut, or you could give them a cheeky jiggle and realise that now you've got something else to play with during the long, cold nights ahead.

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@Charlie Stross

There's plenty of advertising money out there, and if you don't have the costs associated with traditional media (printing, transport, distribution etc) it has the potential to make a packet. But that money will only go to sites that are well read, and for them to be well read they have to be well written with lots of relevant news.

Top Tune

It's a classic of the genre, and no wonder Sir Nod calls it "The Pension"!

Top tune for Christmas 09? Carry You Home from The Lancashire Hotpots (see their MySpace site). And I've just downloaded the Christmas 09 compilation from the FolkCast podcast, which is bloody brilliant!

Turn it up

No-one would object to someone being able to see their skeleton - it's just the fleshy bits on the outside that we get coy about - so turn up the intensity on the X-Ray gizmo and make the people being scanned look like a set of anonymous dancing bones. Presumably guns/bombs/drugs/bottles of water will still stand out, but no-one will get a squint at your intimates.

In fact, this would make the scanner even more like that scene from Total Recall when Arnie runs through the security scanner and we see his bones, but catch no sight of the future Governor of California's frank-n-beans.

@AC

Come come! The Gadget Show might have fun with it's gadgets - but Tomorrow's World could do some daft stunts, too. And at least The Gadget Show doesn't have the boringly earnest medical reports that used to be on TW, and made my heart sink everytime Judith Hann would appear, sounding all worthy and concerned.

Are they sure...

An incorrect apostrophe is like a snooker cue in my eye....

Why not rename the offending streets and areas if the 'pos is inconvenient? Go ahead, wipe away centuries of history. No-one cares, apparently. Let's pander to the hard of thinking.

And could someone have a word with "Morrisons" - a shop which, if their signage is to be believed, sells only people or things called Morrison. It's THE place to go for your Jim and Van records. And is it really true that Van Morrison was born in a gym, and Jim Morrison was born in a van?

No "OK" button

The worst thing is that the standard malwear warning advises users that the requested site "may harm your computer" but that you "may continue at your own risk" but supplies no obvious method of doing so. There's no "OK" button. Unless you know to manually change the URL in your browser (or use another search engine) you're goosed.

@ various anonymous cowards

Working from El Reg's still photo, and assuming that the gold is in bank-standard 400 ounce bars, there's at least 8 imperial tons of gold on that coach, which means that each of the three Minis would have had to outhandle the Italian police while carrying at least 2.66 tons of gold, not a measly one ton as you suggest...

As for not reading the article - only by breaking the back windows is any real weight benefit obtained, and as all the windows are protected by venitian blinds (which would cushion the blow of any thrown object) it's impractical to break them from a distance without serious risk of the thrown object bouncing back into the coach, adding to the weight that's beyond the pivot. So how - in detail - could the windows be broken?

Only if the fuel tank is rear of the gold would emptying it be an advantage. To access a valve on the tank, Crocker would also have to be rear of the gold - but he can't get even get close to it without triggering a slide. So how does he do it?

@ Ian Ferguson

Hang on, lads; I've got a stupid idea.

This so-called solution is a joke. It's not just a case of just retrieving the gold, it's also necessary to recover the bus and escape the pursuing Italian police and the Mafia, so spending several hours atop a mountain and wrecking your only means of transport in the process is an automatic FAIL.

Apart from that, the "winner" fails to explain just how the windows at the back of the coach could be smashed when the slightest movement sends the pile of gold sliding towards the rear; how to drain a huge fuel tank without leaving the coach; or how someone could exit the coach to fetch rocks when the weight inside the vehicle is so finely balanced.

Pasis - because she'd know how to rock a bus full of gold and gangsters

@ Andrew West

I doubt Paddy will be turning in his grave, as he was involved in the new series based on The Prisoner - a series which was magnificent overall but did fall apart completely in the hotch-potch of it's finale. Perhaps the new version will use the original (excellent) idea for the finale which was ditched after McGooghan fell out with the show's original producer?

Jebus! Enough already!

"The Jesus Phone is not, as claimed by so many, the savior of all mankind."

So many? Name one.

And can we stop with this "Jesus Phone" crap - it wasn't even amusing to begin with and by now it's utterly weak.

PS: +1 to those who have complained that the article is too US-centric. The Reg is a British site, and long may it remain so. That doesn't mean Septics and others can't write for it, it just means they need to learn how to speak the lingo before they get a paying gig.

It wouldn't be the first time...

...that a jail has had to have a complete change of locks because someone's taken a publicity photo of the new governor holding a big bunch of keys. Old lags have been able to copy keys from sight for ages.

In other news...

...the government announced that all the hot air that's spouted by spokesmen making announcements about "green" projects will be used to produce one gigawatts of free electricity which will power a massive illuminated sign, a mile high, which will read: Conform, Consume, Obey.

Resolution

Resolution is key on these frames, and 800 x 480 seems pretty woeful. And hasn't Kodak solved a problem that doesn't really exist? Memory is so cheap and small that getting lots of pictures onto a frame is easy, neat and inexpensive. If they were going to lose wires, the power cable is the one to eliminate. Rechargable frame, perchance? Oh, and it costs around four times what it should to be even remotely attractive. Other than that, a winner! Erm....

Spectacular ... but boring

That opening ceremony was certainly spectacular - looking like one of those spooky North Korean mass line dancing events - but it was also unendingly dull, with each element of it going on and on and on and on and on and.....

Disappointing...

Disappointing that the BOFH and PFY paid for the work out of their own pockets. Isn't that what creative accountancy is all about? Those electrical tool kits don't really cost £2,000 a pop, you know...

Pensions and that

People suggesting that an ever increasing birth-rate and population is a good model for a stable and sensible economy are stark, staring mad. Over population is the root of just about every major problem on the planet not caused by religion of one flavour or another.

@ Rolsen

Britric

A decision was made in 1965 to adopt the metric system but no government has ever had the guts to completely get rid of the old Imperial system so we have adopted a weird half-and-half scale of our own. It's not Imperial, and it's not Metric. It's Britric, it's perfectly simple, and it works like this...

Legally, you can only buy fuel or fizzy drinks in litres, but draught cider or beer must be sold in pints. If the bottle is returnable we buy milk in pints. If the bottle is non-returnable, we buy milk in litres.

We weigh sugar in kilograms, precious metals in troy ounces and ourselves in stones. We measure all goods sold by length in centimetres and metres ... and then transport those goods on roads measured in yards and miles.

When the weather is hot we talk in Fahrenheit, because the number is higher and sounds more impressive: "Wow, it was 86 degrees today!" When the weather is cold we talk in Centigrade, because the number is lower and sounds more impressive: "Wow, it's -4 degrees today!"

Want to make a hamburger? You'll need to ask your butcher for 113.398093 grams of beef so you can make a quarter-pounder. Cake recipes will talk about grams of dry goods, and fluid ounces of liquid.

Ships sail in knots, racehorses run over furlongs, football pitches are measured in yards and rugby pitches are measured in metres. Land is often advertised by the hectare (but it's officially registered in acres - at least until now) and if you phone up to order "a ton" of something, you might get a ton, a tun or a tonne!

Then again, we also use the Standard Comparative Index, by which things that are difficult to imagine are compared to things slightly more easy to imagine. It runs: pinhead, fingernail, matchbox, house brick, a football, a human man, family car, double decker bus, Jumbo Jet, Belgium - as in "they have destroyed an area of rainforest the size of Belgium." This is despite the fact that no-one from Britain has a clue how big Belgium is. An alternative to Belgium is Wales, but no-one who isn't from Britain has a clue how big Wales is.

Somehow, it all works. So, will Britain ever go the full nine yards (8.23 metres) and go completely metric? Never! It would be far too confusing...

Proof?

Where's the proof? Where's the evidence that one single Mac has been compromised by this alleged Trojan? There's a great many "could"s, "may"s and "maybe"s in the article and the original blog, but no evidence that this would really work on a real Mac in the real world.

So, it's a theoretical threat - and the world's full to bursting with them already.

I agree with Vendicar, but...

... you've quoted me as disagreeing. I didn't make the "pithier description" comment you "credit" me with; it was Chris Miller - who reminds me of the man who would like to save up £100 but can only afford to put away £1 a week, so he doesn't bother because that's "only" 1/100 of his total goal.

Looking for instant, one-hit solutions to a highly complex problem such as this really is "innumerate codswallop". Clearly we're consuming more energy than the planet can, in the long-term, supply via the sources we're currently exploiting. We need to expand all kinds of supply methods, develop technology *and* reduced demand. If we all cut our individual demand a little bit - even if it's "only" 1/6000 of our total electrical output - that's a contribution to the cause.

It's not whether we should turn off our TVs at night rather than leaving them on stand-by that's the question. That, frankly, is a no-brainer. It's where to draw the line between economy/ecology and inconvenience.